Is ARM the x86 killer?

ok so I believe you exophase, but whats the conclusion, will the "new ipad" have half the GPU performance of the ipad 2 or not? If it really is half the performance, Is it feasible to do a trick like render at 1024x768 and use 4 x HWAA to fake a higher res output? Lets face it, most games don't really need to render at 2048x1526 resolution, a lower res with some kind of intelligent scaling will look very nice.

Thanks for the compliments, but I don't know nearly as much as you guys think (and my practical experience is even lower).. Arun has been meaning to release a mobile GPU writeup on beyond3d for a while now. I'd wait for that, it'll probably be much better than anything I could write.

eskatonic wrote:

ok so I believe you exophase, but whats the conclusion, will the "new ipad" have half the GPU performance of the ipad 2 or not? If it really is half the performance, Is it feasible to do a trick like render at 1024x768 and use 4 x HWAA to fake a higher res output? Lets face it, most games don't really need to render at 2048x1526 resolution, a lower res with some kind of intelligent scaling will look very nice.

I think the first thing you have to consider is that no or few existing iPad games are going to run natively at the higher resolution. The display controller probably includes scaling hardware, which may include filtering (for instance, OMAP3's display controller has a polyphase FIR filter). This makes a lot of sense for Apple to implement, if they don't already, because it doesn't cost extra memory bandwidth to scale up. I don't think you really need intelligent scaling if you're targeting 1024x768, or say, 2048x768 which may be a viable option for some. If you're going for something in between that changes. In the worst case, if the display controller doesn't have scaling w/filtering you can get bilinear filtering by doing it the GPU, or something better at the expense of shader cycles.

I wouldn't expect anyone to bother with MSAA w/o downsampling, if such a thing is even possible, because the main reason you want higher resolution is to get more detailed textures rather than edges (vs anti-aliasing anyway).. but I have no idea what people would prefer here.

It's going to be up to game developers to decide how they want to balance the game for the higher resolution. We may see cases where you get better looking pixels at the lower resolution. You may remember something similar with Epic Citadel on iPad vs iPhone 4 vs iPhone 3GS. The 3GS, despite having a slightly slower GPU, had much better looking pixels because the resolution was so much lower. The difference in this case is that I expect (or at least hope) that games that have different quality levels for iPad 2 and iPad 3 (yeah I know it's not really called that) will let you choose which one to use when ran on the latter.

I disagree. Its a small compared to the larger PC market, but volumes are still quite large in absolute sense, and are well above what is needed to sustain relatively affordable product pricing. Modern high end GPUs are enormously complex and yet quite affordable from multiple vendors and in a large number of different configurations. That is a sure sign of a large market with adequate economy of scale.

In comparison, the market for the tiny fraction of your so-called "ultra niche" market that wants external enclosures (and has a compatible laptop) is orders of magnitude smaller. I doubt there is enough demand to profitably develop such a product at all, let alone to price it cost-effectively.

metafor wrote:

But again, you have to compare the total cost. Assuming someone's going to own a laptop anyway because, realistically, everyone does. The cost of an external GPU box would mean you won't need to buy an entire desktop, including the memory, CPU, case/cooling, HD, etc.

To be clear, I was comparing to that. My claim was that buying an entire separate PC was going to be more cost effective then buying such an accessory and paying the markup for a compatible laptop.

At the risk of derailing the thread again, I had to pipe up and say that I would be part of the market where a product like the external video solution would sell.

2 years ago I replaced my desktop with an equivalent to slightly better performing laptop at a cost of about $1300. At the time I was mostly playing WOW, but also played various strategy games that were not incredibly intensive. The laptop was a nice video upgrade from my aging desktop.

Today, my laptop wont play skyrim acceptably, struggles with SWTOR, and wont run battlefield worth a damn. I priced a new top end laptop at $1800 cost w/no os. I actually demoed it for a couple week and it rand everything I wanted to do acceptably if not at the highest settings.

A new desktop would cost ~1100 to get similar/better performance compared to the laptop I demoed. With the external graphics solution, I could use a fully capable laptop for $800-$1000, and spend another $500 on an external graphics solution and I would be fine with that. My would probably be the less but graphics performance in the home office would be close enough to desktop performance for me.

In my situation, I dont really game heavily when I travel, but I absolutely hate having to keep things synced from my desktop to my laptop. Invariably, I would want some tool or file I forgot to copy or didnt have installed. Its worth the price premium in the time and efficiency I save. I would end up with a smaller, lighter, cooler laptop without sacrificing as much of the gaming performance as I have to now.

I really appreciate the links to the DIY external video, didnt know that there was a product like that available.

I'm starting to wonder why sites even bother running 3D benchmarks, because when you look at everything else I'd swear they have close to zero interest in 3D on phones.

In the big list of "works perfectly" apps AT included exactly one game. In the battery tests we get talk time, which uses no CPU, and a web browsing test, which using an unknown (but probably not very high) amount of CPU. Why is there no benchmark of battery life for gaming, or for video playback for that matter (although that also has a low CPU load)? Do they think that people only use their phones to casually browse websites, of course typically one at a time? Because if that's the case then this entire emphasis on CPU and GPU power on phones is pretty misplaced.

Well, the truth is that if you're gaming on the phone, you better have a charger near. The Galaxy Nexus gets hot after a few round of simple tower defense games and it always end with the "connect your charger now" dialog, I'd estimate the 100% to zero at about 2 hours tops at zero brightness (completely dark room).

I can't wait to see what this thing can do with the ICS browser / Chrome for Android and the improved Dalvik VM in ICS, but even with a software handicap, it's competitive with the very best chips available now; the One X uses the quad core Tegra 3, the One S uses the new Qualcomm S4, and the rest, like the TI OMAP, Exynos, any A9 just can't keep up with those 3 at the top.

^^ Die shrunk phones are coming this year though, with ARM A15 around the corner. It's essentially chalking these wins up against last year's CPUs.

In the meantime, Intel continues to work on their 22nm Silvermont SoC expected to be available in the first half of next year. That's not long after the 2H debut of the A15 which is expected on a 28nm process. I suspect we're about to watch a multi-billion dollar game of leapfrog.

Well, the truth is that if you're gaming on the phone, you better have a charger near. The Galaxy Nexus gets hot after a few round of simple tower defense games and it always end with the "connect your charger now" dialog, I'd estimate the 100% to zero at about 2 hours tops at zero brightness (completely dark room).

I've seen plenty of people pull out their phones and play games without being by a charger. Do you really think such a popular segment of app downloads is only gaining usage among people who use their phones while plugged in? What do you think people will be more likely to use their phones for on an airplane - gaming and videos, or web browsing when their phone has to be in airplane mode?

Yeah, it uses more power than web browsing. That's why it's so important to actually test it. It'll vary a lot between games and phones. For your information, iPhone 4S lasts 3 hours in Epic Citadel, which is one of the more demanding games available. iPhone 4 lasted 4 hours, because it has lower quality visuals. Somehow I don't think these tests were at zero brightness. If games gave options to turn down image quality the end user would be able to balance it against battery life.

See, AT can throw in at least one gaming power measurement for their iPhone 4S review. Too bad they can't do that here. To think, everyone would be so focused on CPU performance and things like x86 compatibility just for web browsing. Where these browsing tests are pretty lousy benchmarks because we don't even know what's being ran. Does it characterize the CPU load the reader undertakes while browsing? Who knows.

I didn't say plugged in, but 3 hours for the iphone is horrible compared to browsing, it would feel like empty in no time for most people who don't start with a full battery. This is for those real 3D games.

But GPU's on a phone is horribly overrated imo. Angry birds, Draw something, World of Goo etc are just basically 2D games using fancy sprites that run on anything, while sipping power. The power usage of these are more comparable to browsing than 3D.